


sky blue and broken glass

by steviesfreckles



Series: Bits And Pieces [1]
Category: The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alec was assulted, Angst, Descriptions of PTSD, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magnus Bane is more lost than he's ever been in his very long life, Magnus isn't quite sure what to do, Mentions of Sexual Assult, Open Ending, PTSD, So much comfort, mild descriptions of assault, not exactly a happy ending but not sad either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21755119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steviesfreckles/pseuds/steviesfreckles
Summary: Alec is self-destructing in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted and Magnus doesn't know how to help even though he wants nothing more than to take away all the suffering on his love's shoulders. It feels like there's no good way to fix things, but sometimes theres nothing wrong with being a little broken, as long as you have someone to hold you at the end of it.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Bits And Pieces [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1568008
Comments: 1
Kudos: 46





	sky blue and broken glass

**Author's Note:**

> Please be gentle in this. Alec's feelings and trauma are based on personal experience which has made it hard to put out there but at the same time, you probably know someone who has gone through something similar. It's not easy to talk about and it holds more anger than most expect it to. 
> 
> The best way you can support someone is to just ask what they need from you.
> 
> if you want to yell at me about my writing, feel free to do so on twitter @gigidarling_, on snapchat @deviantofnormal, or Tumblr @deathofsirens

"How do you do it?" Magnus’s voice is hesitant, but somehow still firm. He wants to be gentle but he needs an answer all the same.

Alec curls in on himself, “I don’t know, I don’t. I just- I just put my head down and do it. I don’t have any other choice.” His voice tumbles out like loose gravel.

“Is it worth it?” Magnus’s eyebrows draw in concern. He knows it bothers Alec that he feels so hurt for him but he can’t help it. He loves him so terribly he aches with it.

“No, no it's not,” Alec's voice quivers, with anger or unshed tears, Magnus can’t quite tell. “because sometimes I sit down at night and drink coffee until my hands are shaking like a one man earthquake and I can’t quite breathe enough and somehow I’m breathing too much. It’s never enough and always too much, you know?” Alec pauses almost like it wasn’t a metaphorical question.

“You can fight and endure and keep on keeping on and no matter how much you do it, it’ll always just be out of reach. So I close my eyes, fill my lungs with smoke from a cigarette I don't even want to be smoking and let myself cry until I finish it. It’s never long enough, but if I let myself break for any longer than a handful of moments I won’t be able to put myself back together again.” It’s not anger or tears that make Alec's voice waver, Magnus realizes, its exhaustion.

“I’m sorry,” He wishes he had words that weren’t so hollow. “I wish I knew what I could do to fix something, anything, even a little bit of it. And no matter how impossible it is, I want to carry this burden for you.” Magnus knows how impossible it is to fix and how much Alec doesn’t want him to fix it, but the words fall out of his mouth before he can help it, and he can’t take them back.

Alec’s eyes flash so violently Magnus can almost taste the ozone in the air. “Don’t apologize,” Magnus wouldn’t exactly be taken aback by bitterness in his voice, but the seething hatred is something he didn’t know his boyfriend was capable of. “I can’t stand being treated like something fragile. I know how awful it is, I know how much you want to do something, anything, to make it all go away, to take it from me. But you can’t. You just can’t and it okay. I don’t want you to take it from me.”

“I just can’t stand to see you like this,” Magnus can almost feel himself falling apart and he nearly laughs. How self-centered can he be? Alec was the one assaulted and he’s the one who can’t handle it. “How much you’re hurting- it breaks my heart to watch you suffer like this.”

The rage emanating from Alec is almost palpable the second he finishes his sentence. “Do you even know how selfish that sounds? You want to take my hurt because it hurts _you_ ,” Alec stops and looks at his mismatched socks. Magnus can hear the tears hit the hardwood floor of the living room, and despite how much he questions himself in this, no matter how lost he feels he knows that Alec needs him, needs him close. He gathers Alec into his arms and his boyfriend melts into him.

“I know that’s not how you mean it but it doesn’t really matter. You can’t make everything better and you can’t make this go away and you can’t make me remember the whole night and everything that happened so this whole trial thing could be easy and I don’t want it. I don’t want to be fixed.” Alec holds his breath and tries to collect himself in the amount of time he can stand to hold his breath after crying.

“I’m broken. I am so, _so_ broken and that’s okay. No one seems to want to hear that. All they can stand to tell me is that I’ll heal or that one day it won’t hurt so bad and that’s true, but it's also fine that I’m so fucked up I can’t handle doing normal things because _that’s what’s normal_ after getting assaulted, it's _normal_.” He gushes the rest of his speech out with the air he was holding deep in his lungs. In one breath, he breaks open Magnus’s ribcage and squeezes his heart until Magnus is almost certain it won’t ever beat quite the same again.

He wants Alec to know that he can handle his broken, that he can handle all the things that are happening around them and that he can see his pain. “I know darling, I know-“ It comes out wrong and he knows it the second the words leave his lips.

“No,” Alec interrupts, “I don’t think you do. I don’t expect you to know, to understand. Because you haven’t been accused of being a liar and a slut and because of it you were asking for something terrible to happen to you and that’s good.” The words are forceful and heavy.

“I don’t want you to understand what that feels like because then that means that you know what it is to sit on your kitchen floor in an empty house at 1:30 on a Tuesday afternoon trembling and hyperventilating because you can feel his hands on you and in you and you can taste the sweat and dirt on his fingers that he shoved in your mouth. It means that you can’t sleep and that you don’t even want to sleep because you’ll wake up in the same state that you sat in on your kitchen floor earlier in the day. It means that you can never be exactly sure of what happened but you know that no matter how drunk you were and how unsure of the sequence of events you are, that your body can’t lie to you like this, yet everyone around you seems to question everything and tell you you’re an attention-seeking whore even though you never wanted to say anything about it in the first place.” The words are punched out of his chest and Magnus can see his stuffing spilling out at the seams. His threads are frayed and worn.

There is nothing like this kind of hurting, he knows that much. He knows that he hasn’t seen the kind of helplessness or struggle on someone in any other kind of situation. It makes him surrender. He wants to be what Alec needs and there’s no way to do it without causing more suffering to his already wounded lover.

“I want to be sorry.” Magnus drops his shoulders and rests the crown of his head on Alec’s chest.

“I know you do,” Alec’s voice sounds tight and cracked, but his arms are still as strong as they ever were, his hold still as encompassing as before all of this happened, “but that’s not what I need.” He meets Alec's eyes again, under all the defeat, the hazel is still familiar.

“What is it that you need? What do you _need_ from me?” Magnus wishes he his voice wasn’t as desperate and vulnerable as he felt. He should be the one holding Alec and comforting him, not the other way around.

“I need you to just be there. I don’t need you to be sorry or fixing it or doing much at all.” Alec can’t seem to be anything but tired anymore. “I just need a shoulder to lean on and someone to hold me when I finally can’t be awake any longer, just to chase away the nightmares when I don't have the energy to do it myself. It’s a lot to ask. I know it's a lot.” The hesitation in his voice destroys Magnus more than his hurt.

“I know how hard it is to stand by and watch someone you love be forced to fight a battle when you can’t do anything to help, especially when you so desperately want to, but that’s all I need. I need you to have my back and that’s it.”

It’s such a simple request it almost doesn’t feel like enough.

“I can do that,” it rolls off his tongue easily. “I can’t promise that I’ll always be good at it but I can promise you that I will do my best and if I need to stop or start doing something you can just ask me. I want to be here and do what you need of me.” It’s said in a rush and too slow all at once. Magnus wonders if there’s really a right way to handle this.

“Thank you,” Magnus wants to laugh, of course Alec is thanking him.

“Thank you for being the first person to actually care about what I need in all of this instead of just assuming to know what I need or telling me what I have to do. It’s not all the time that you find someone that actually cares what you need.” It hurts but this whole thing is a terrible kind of pain that won’t heal for a long time.

Why hasn’t anyone ever loved him enough to ask what he needs?

“I do, I do care,” the words are filled with devastation, “It doesn’t mean that I’ll always be perfect at it but I always have the best of intentions. And if I mess it up terribly you can always tell me I’m being an idiot.”

They both let out a watery laugh and lean in until their foreheads pressed together, just sharing in their breath and their emotion and their everything.

Magnus tugs on his hand, “Come on darling, let’s go to bed.”

They shed their outer clothes into piles on the bedroom floor and slip in between gold silk sheets. Alec's head rests on Magnus's bare chest and he runs his fingers through dark messy curls. The pull each other as close as they can until the ending of one body isn't discernible from the start of the other. Magnus simply holds Alec while they slowly drift into sleep. 

The last thought Magnus has is that maybe, so long as they have each other, everything will turn out okay. 


End file.
